Steve Jobs's Flamewar With A College Student

Usually we praise a CEO for responding directly to customers but Apple’s Steve Jobs has made a hobby of talking tough to those who email him at sjobs@apple.com. In the latest case, because she couldn’t get a quote out of the PR department, a college journalism student took him to task. So he took her to hers, saying “Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade” and “Please leave us alone.”

You can read the transcript of two turds throwing themselves at each other over at Valleywag.

Every interaction you have with your customers is a chance to redefine and/or burnish your brand and reputation. Apparently Jobs is concerned that not enough people know that he’s ruthless.

I think people still buy his products because they are rather good on a number of levels. If you think the bosses of the other various and sundry consumer electronics corporations are cuddly carebears, I suggest you look a few of them up. I’d start with this article about Samsung’s response to some ribbing they got in a Christmas newspaper article.

Also, ask anyone who’s worked for HP over the last 10 years what they thought of Carly Fiorina…

I hate Apple because Apple products generate this unmistakable “my shit don’t stink” atmosphere around any Apple user. The closest thing I could compare Apple to are those Jitterbug big-keypad phones for old people. In this case, it’s for less tech-savvy folks.

Well, “just don’t hold it that way” sold a shit-ton of iPhones, so it seems there’s something to publically disrespecting your customers.. Personally, I’d like to see Steve Jobs meet “The Sisters” from Shawshank Redemption.

Giving back money you took from others by illegal contracts and other despotism that can only become one who owns a company bent on monopolism (he also spent days trying to subvert justice during his deposition) isn’t being nice. It’s trying to buy your way into heaven when you’ve already been decided you’re going to hell.

He also has some ridiculously assholish ideas about his software. For example, he believed that almost all calls about his software circa 1995 weren’t because of bugs or difficulties using it, but were all feature requests.

Did I mention Bill Gates’ company thinks Open Source software is a cancer on society and that no good software can be made without people paying lots of money all the time for it? Even when it’s inappropriate? Calling anyone that does believe in software being free (which, at the time, was a bit of an assumption–you have to understand what it was like at that point in time) a theif and a parasite? Don’t worry, Bill Gates still thinks giving away anything to do with computer is communism.

He has a lot of cunning, though. He managed to absolutely burn IBM on the OS for their new computer by buying up the rights to software someone else made, called QDOS, and simply tweaked it to work on the up-n-coming IBM PC and renamed it MS-DOS. This is the very OS that IBM had already tried to buy for 1/4 million for themselves. Bill Gates managed to slime his way into being a middle-man for QDOS, buying it for 1/10th that instead and selling it to IBM for so very much more. These backdoor dealings earned the owners of QDOS 1 million dollars in court settlements later on.

I won’t even get into Microsoft breaking their license agreement with Apple over the Windows GUI despite Bill Gates constant insistence on just how important and solid license agreements are.

He even worked to kill the agreement (why are these only good when BG’s company is the beneficiary?) he had with IBM to co-develop a GUI for the IBM PC (OS/2). Microsoft worked hard to develop windows and, how shall we put it, “lost interest” in OS/2 after a few years.

He was also a terrible driver, being arrested for all sorts of infractions, including drunk driving (charges later dropped).

Real winner of a guy. But it’s all okay, because some of the money he made through so many shady deals is being given back to society. I have to hand it to him: He is an absolute master of spin, because so many people new to computers think just like you do. Only us folks who have been in this industry for a few decades know what kind of a guy lies behind those glasses.

Gates might still be an asshole as a person. He may just be a generous one with a social conscious. I have no idea one or another.

As far as Jobs goes, I think he certainly comes off as a huge dickhead. The student’s request wasn’t outrageous by a long shot. He probably could have answered her questions in less time than he spent arguing with her.

He still might be an asshole. From the stories I’ve read from the early days of Microsoft, he was pretty tough on folks and his emails to developers about their code were legendarily brutal. Age, family, success and his new role may have mellowed him, but most CEO-types are not particularly lovey-dovey.

This is one of the main reasons why the only Apple products I own are an old circa- 1993 Mac from a garage sale & a 2nd generation ipod that was given to me by a friend(I collect old electronics, which is why I still have both of these items lol). I refuse to give one strawpenny to a company that grossly overcharges for its (often inferior)products & who blatantly don’t give two shits about their customers. The response about the iPhone 4 antenna debacle was appalling & very demonstrative of Apple’s general attitude toward it’s customers.

“Hey Jobs, there’s a fatal defect in the antenna design…”

“Pssh, whatever. It’s perfect, YOU’RE just using it wrong.”

“No, seriously, here are thousands more people that are having the exact same problems!”

Seriously! All he needed to do was not answer the darn email. I don’t care what you think of the girl’s responses, as a CEO he should show a little bit of maturity.
I already had problems with Apple’s business practices, but this sealed the deal for me. I’m waiting for the rest of the world to wake up and realize what Apple really is.

Except…he probably gets emails like hers all the time. I teach that type of student, and they’re seriously assholes. I think it’s great that he was a) honest and b) put her in her place. She’s a whiny brat (“I need your help with my homework!”) – if I were him I would have told her the same thing. I’m sure Media Relations has better things to do with their time than give a quote for a school assignment (with a readership of 1). She should have said it was for the school paper, instead. Either way, Jobs 1 – Stupid college girl – 0

rtfa, her homework was to contact his PR and get a statement. PR refused to give a statement. She e-mailed him asking why PR wouldn’t give a statement. She explained it was for her journalism course (Y’know, the same thing people from places like Engadget say) and he told her to screw off.

She wasn’t complaining that he wouldn’t help get her an A, she was complaining about his lack of professionalism to the future of the people that will be COVERING his products.

Yeah, I read the article: “Her journalism professor had assigned her a story on a new initiative at her college to buy iPads for all incoming students. She wanted to get a quote from Apple about the use of iPads in academic settings.” The professor didn’t tell her to call Apple PR, and having researched this kind of thing myself, there is more than enough information on Apple’s view of iPads in academic settings available on the Apple website.

No one else is required to help her with her homework. If the source she tries to use refuses, she needs to find another one. If she’d taken three seconds on the apple website she could’ve found out the price of ipads and seen what the education discount is. She didn’t NEED a bulk discount price to take a stab at the amount and put it in her article. Steve Jobs is a dick but she whined at him and he’s under no obligation to either put up with that or acquiesce OR be polite about it.

Quite simply, the people who tend to accomplish big things (like run a big corporation or hold a powerful committee seat in Congress) are also the biggest A-holes on the planet. Some gain that position because we tend to view aggressiveness and initiative as positives (these can also lead to very reckless behavior); others become like this because money and power are alluring but corrupting.

Me too. And this J-student was pretty full of herself, and whiny, and unprofessional. Journalists get rejected in requests for interviews all the time. If she throws a hissy fit every time it happens she won’t last long in the field.

P.S. – You should read the comment posted by “SolidSquid” — I’ll save you the link and just post it here. The OP wasn’t as nice as she makes it out to be. Simply because you “humbly” ask for something doesn’t mean that it matches the tone in which it should be presented: politely.

SolidSquid
09/21/10

“Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”

vs

“Mr. Jobs, I was wondering whether you would be willing to provide a comment for an article on Long Island University’s initiative to provide Apple iPads to all incoming undergraduates. Thank you for your time”

Yes, he was a bit of a dick in his responses, but considering her email to him accuses him of hypocracy and is laced with sarcasm, it isn’t really surprising that he didn’t see any reason to help her out. If she does lose her A over this, it should be for the lack of professionalism when contacting someone for information rather than for not having a quote for it.

Haha, I read the official transcripts from their exchange. She was sending her e-mails from her Blackberry via T-mobile, which certainly didn’t endear her to the CEO of the company that brought us iPhone. Not too bright on her part. Perhaps she’s in the wrong major.

Did you read her email? This had nothing to do with journalism and was 100% about her and her grade. She says it herself…

“The completion of this article is crucial to my grade in the class, and it may potentially get published in our university’s newspaper. I had 3 quick questions regarding iPads, and wanted to obtain answers from the most credible source: Apple’s Media Relations Department.

I have called countless times throughout the week, leaving short, but detailed, messages which included my contact information and the date of my deadline. Today, I left my 6th message, which stressed the increasingly more urgent nature of the situation. It is now the end of the business day, and I have not received a call back. My deadline is tomorrow.

Mr. Jobs, I humbly ask why Apple is so wonderfully attentive to the needs of students, whether it be with the latest, greatest invention or the company’s helpful customer service line, and yet, ironically, the Media Relations Department fails to answer any of my questions which are, as I have repeatedly told them, essential to my academic performance.”

Leave the Apple part out of it for a minute. Expecting and demanding (and she did) that a multi-billion dollar company answer your specific question for your journalism 101 assignment is a pitch perfect example of entitlement. What he wrote was 100% true, just lacking refinement.

But she started by contacting their PR department. The email to Steve Jobs was an afterthought and she admits she was more venting her frustration at being ignored.

You’d THINK that Apple would think just a tiny bit harder: It took me 5 seconds to realize that the use of iPads in academic settings has been brought up a lot and a university actually wanting a massive quantity would be worth a mint. It’s not like it would take a huge amount of time. Just write up a few “The iPad is something colleges cannot function without” comments and send them whenever people inquire about this topic. I think that would make more sense than Mr. Jobs telling her to leave them alone. Whether it make him a jerk or not, now all the headlines are focused away from the multitude of uses for his products and more on him being petty enough to respond to frustrated students, effectively telling them to get off his lawn.

She didn’t sound too entitled to me. She’s a student in journalism – she could quite possibly be someone who reports on Apple, or Apple-related issues at some point in the near future (and perhaps via Television).

She can’t be the first person to ask this question – why not have a FAQ and refer her to it on their website? And instead of being a putz to someone who wants to potentially make you look good (who knows what her assignment could turn into – maybe some sales at that university? which could then spread)… just answer the frigging question asshole. Instead of spending the 30 seconds telling her to “leave us alone” – how about saying “Sorry that happened. Let me forward this to someone in PR”…

But no, he had to be a fuckstick…. I’m so happy that I gave up on Apple back when Jobs killed the Newton in his pissing match with Sculley…

“she could quite possibly be someone who reports on Apple, or Apple-related issues at some point in the near future”

And Apple has a history of being so open and welcoming with the media?

It’s not their job to hold her hand. The world is not going to bend to her every whim. She had numerous questions, all of which were insignificant and self serving. Persistence is great, but journalism 101, if you can’t get info from once source, you try another angle. You don’t keep stupidly banging your head against a brick wall. He taught her in a 4 sentences what her school couldn’t in 4 years.

What “hold her hand”? She wanted to ask a question about the use of the iPad in educational settings. Certainly Apple might have some info on this? I’m sure she’s not the first person to have come up with the thought.

So why not go right to Apple and ask the question? Yeah, the whole “my grade depends on it” thing is kinda inane, but honestly – when you’re in college – that’s your focus (well, one of them anyway).

That Apple decided to blow her off was silly. That Jobs had to be a dick about it was just stupid.

Apple charges a premium for their stuff. Part of that premium is the technology, some should be for premium customer service. So if some kid wants to ask you a question – answer the friggin question.

This ‘kid’ could someday be a reporter who remembers that you were shitty to her. Or she could be someone in charge of making purchasing decisions for a multi-billion dollar company and guess what Apple? You’re known to be dickish – but Samsung, with their Galaxy Tab was nice – maybe I shouldn’t put my ass on the line to choose Apple – because they might be dicks to someone who controls my job… Oh, where’d that deal go? To someone else? Why’s that?! Wonder what we did wrong…

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but why risk it and the bad PR to argue with a customer when you could give them a one-liner answer in less time than it would take to argue?

How about “Yes, we’ve given it thought, and while we can’t go into specifics, it’s being considered. Apple has long been supporters of education, and we plan to do so in the future. Thanks for asking.”

Marketingspeak, but it’s a fucking answer Jobs… not “boo hoo… leave us alone…”

Here needing a quote for a school paper isn’t really a media event (I’ll admit I did not read the article). The media department has a limited number of people and limited number of hours to respond to countless requests from legitimate publications. I can understand them not spending that time on a school paper.

i read the article and you’re right on. i thought jobs handled it pretty well, and i don’t like apple at all. he repeatedly said he was sorry and after several emails finally ended with “leave us alone” she says “Under no circumstances should a person who runs a company speak to a customer that way” and she’s right. he should have never bothered to respond to her in the first place.

Regardless of whether or not the student making the requests is annoying, the responses may be terse but the tone is entirely INcorrect. This is what makes people hate the Apple attitude, which appears to be one that obviously comes from the top. You don’t treat a customer, or potential customer, with rudeness, unless you’re OK with losing them as such. Obviously Mr. Jobs doesn’t mind losing a customer, because that exchange was childish on both sides.

It would have been helpful to know what her requests of the PR department was, but in fairness to the student, she was asking the right department what Apple’s PR positions would be. If she’s not going to get a response because she’s not a “real” journalist, but a student, that’s one thing – however, it is pretty unprofessional for a PR department to simply ignore what are potentially valid PR requests (for whatever reason).

I can’t speak for the student in the story, whom I expect to be entitled and childish in her early twenties and in the relative comfort, safety, and un-real-world environs of a university, but Mr. Jobs’ responses are classic a-hole (and unsurprisingly, also what I expect from an exec at Apple).

no company EVER has to answer interview requests. she asking in effect for an interview. she really sounds like a pain and i am sure that having her as a customer would be expensive, every day getting constant calls to answer her question about whatever. if i owned a company that sold ANYTHING i would black list because she sounds EXACTLY like the kind of person that is more trouble than their money is worth.

She wanted a direct quote from the Apple PR dept regarding the idea of her University buying Ipads for students. That is NOT an interview. Steve Jobs could’ve just directed the email to the PR dept, or have given a simple quote like ‘students and ipads, great idea’ or ignored her. But taking the extra effort to be a jerk with more than one email exchange comes off incredibly douchey. And Jobs knowing full well that this would draw media attention, I question what Apple thinks of it’s customers.

Came to say this. My opinion of Jobs has not changed a bit after reading that exchange. I do wonder why he doesn’t have a peon he can forward his unimportant emails to that can answer them for him, though. I’m sure he has more important things to do than answering spoiled brats’ emails.

While Jobs certainly didn’t handle this terribly well, neither did she. She comes off as a typical over-entitled brat.

No, just simply asking a PR department for a quote on a product doesn’t mean you’re going to get a response. Tenacity is part of being a journalist. Whining to the guy up at the top of a company isn’t part of it. I’d give her a C- at best.

As mentioned on Valleywag, the story that this student could have used is that she tried contacting the company six different times and didn’t receive a reply. She could have looked up someone’s email address/contact information within Apple and asked them, directly, what they thought. Why did she call Apple’s PR department, when Apple has an Education Institutions number? She could have spoken to someone who can tell her about the use of iPads in school settings, how colleges and students utilize them, why they should be used instead of laptops, etc.

Also also, she says that she’s a customer of his, but she sent her email via Blackberry. I’m sure she does use Apple products, but it would have lent more credibility to her statement if she didn’t have “sent via Blackberry” on her email.

That being said, he could have just ignored her email and not been such a jerk about it.

She might have been better off to quiz some local teachers who are into technology. Our staff would have talked her ears off……frequently, in this sort of thing, the local adult ed schools and university extension folks are way ahead of the K12 and college educators, since distance ed is pretty much the best way to get through to their students.

I’m sort of bugged how Steve uses the terms “we”, “us” instead of “Apple” or “I”. I guess it’s correct but it always hits me as being awfully close to The Royal We in tone when coming from a mere person and not a Press Release quote.

Jobs has been at Apple longer than anyone else there (save the token salary they pay Woz which means he’s still an employee), and is widely credit with bringing back the company from the brink of oblivion when he returned years after he was unceremoniously booted out. He is the company.

I don’t really care for him (still haven’t forgiven him for what he did to the Apple II series), but like it or not he is the company.

Now would be a good time to point out that not everyone who uses Apple’s technology worships at the First Church of Jobs. I promise, not all of us feel compelled to have the latest iThing, and most of us can admit that not only is Jobs not our Dark Overlord, we think that he’s an asshole quite often.

Admittedly, the journalism student here was way out of line, and her emails did come across sounding like whining about the fact that she wasn’t going to get a good grade. Apple markets their technology to students. They don’t market any sort of service to help those users get passing grades beyond tech support and the essential service needed to keep the technology up and running smoothly. They are a computer company, not a paper mill. This girl was way, WAY overstepping her boundaries and showing a startling lack of journalistic professionalism, and is, quite frankly, a self-important, entitled asshole. I can understand why Jobs got bitchy with her.

That said, he IS the CEO of a massive technology company. You’d think that he would be able to craft a more professional response, even in the face of entitled, demanding whining. Being fabulously wealthy and having a hoard of people who think that you can Do No Wrong is no excuse for being a total dick. Maybe those turtlenecks are cutting off blood flow to his brain.

Sometimes, in a little tiff like this, both parties are equally at fault. Jobs for being a bit terse (like so many IT types, and I am one), and the student for being over-the-top demanding. It’s a term paper, for goodness sake. You can demand stuff from mommy and daddy, but here is your first clue that the rest of the world doesn’t care as much about you. Lessons like this are why you go to college.

Jobs is a dick. Whether the student is entitled to a response from PR or not isn’t the issue. Jobs the dick can still respond in a professional way, or just refer the issue to PR…or ignore it all together.

Why so many fanboys fawn over his every move is beyond me. He has a consistent pattern of being an egotistical, arrogant jack ass…

Apple makes products that appeal to people, and people buy them. Jobs can do or say whatever the hell he wants to, as long as sales keep growing. I’m sure he doesn’t care what anyone else thinks of him at this point.

Just because you think something does not mean it should be said. There are certain codes of conduct that we are all supposed to abide by to help society work in a peaceful manner. Both individuals in this e-mail flame war failed at this, and therefore they resulted in making themselves look poorly.

Jobs didn’t fail at all. If she wants to be a journalist, she’s going to have to accept that people will hate on her. All the time. In fact, considering some of the rude responses I’ve received from lesser businessmen, he seemed to be going quite easy on her.

She didn’t contact him as a student or a customer experiencing a problem with his company. She contacted him as a member of the media with the audacity to complain that his PR department didn’t respond. For her term paper. So she could get a “good grade.” Waaaambulance.

Maybe she’ll think twice next time, before she assumes someone actually cares.

Jobs failed at being courteous and respectful in his response to the young lady. Regardless of what someone says to you, there is always a way to still decline a request (and even express displeasure) while still treating someone with respect. Instead of being the “bigger person,” Jobs decided to lower himself the manners and maturity of the student.

This is pretty big PR fail, too. Even the largest companies have huge PR departments that could, at the very least say something like, “We only respond to general circulation media. We will not provide a statement to you.”

That reminds me of a sketch in Robot Chicken on the Death Star where Vader ‘Force Chokes’ some random officer. It turns out they just move him somewhere else and give him a fake beard. That way they get to go on living and Vader get’s to think he’s being ruthless and killing people.

I was a little put off by her stating her grade would suffer without an Apple quote. Then I realized, this is the journalism STUDENT equivalent of “I really need a quote or my editor is going to kill me.” When you put it in that context, it seems rather normal. Journalists do what they need to do to get the quote for the article.

I hope in her article, she states “When reached for comment, Apple CEO Steve Jobs responded with ‘Please leave us alone.'”

I would like to see/hear the communications that she sent to Apple PR. Did she approach it like this “I’m a Journalism Student, and I am working on a piece on the use of iPads and other electronic devices in higher learning environments and was wondering if Apple could provide a quote/statistics (whatever she was looking for)” or did she approach it like this “I am a Journalism student and I am working on a class assignment on iPads being used in the classroom, I really need to speak with someone to get a quote, and without it I will probably fail”. Her communications with Jobs is not what I would call professional or how I would expect a journalist to act, to me it sounds like a student expecting someone else to do her work for her which I suspect is why Apple PR did not return her calls. As Jobs said, their goals do not include helping a student get a good grade. A skill that a Journalist needs to learn is how to be persistent without being annoying, and figuring out what they need to say to get the scoop/quote/statistics that will MAKE the story. Seems like Ms. Isaacs failed in this area.

No one is pointing out the obvious here. Emails are almost impossible to verify unless all parties involved admit to sending them. This student admits that her grade “depends on” this quote (which strikes me as more than a little hard to believe), but if true, then she has a clear motivation for making this whole thing up. Yet everyone is willing to jump on the “bash Steve Jobs” bandwagon, and snark king Ben Popken’s undisguised hatred of Apple strikes again.

I don’t think anyone here is Bashing Jobs’ response. I think the comments here can be summarized like this:

Steve’s responses are terse but true, and not something we would expect to see from a CEO (i.e. they are not politically correct, filtered through legal counsel and PR machine).

The student is a spoiled brat who throws a tantrum when she doesn’t get her way, and expects that by complaining and badmouthing Apple PR staff that the CEO might come back and say, Oh, sorry, we didn’t mean to cause you to fail, here is a Quote from the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company Hope you get an A!

Perhaps the general public hold Jobs to a higher standard as the older, more mature executive of a multi-national company compared with a young student who has yet to experience the real world, but a J-schoold student should be focused on ethics and fairness, and she has demonstrated that if she does not get her way she will run home and cry to momma as opposed to completing her assignment and including a quote from Apple as being “Leave us alone”. Take the quote you are given and turn it into a story!

OK, so it’s an article about Steve Jobs, but their web site is broken on the iPhone (server cannot be found error when it redirects to mobile site). Are they doing that on purpose so Steve can’t read it?

Thanks that is helpful, though not something 95% of us would know. Broken mobile web sites are a pet peeve of mine (thanks consumerist for _eventually_ turning off your automatic redirect to the mobile site after it stopped working). If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. We don’t need a mobile site, just give us what works

How does one define PR? PUBLIC relations, right? Not press relations. That means the department has a responsibility to address the questions of anyone who inquires. I think the PR department of a well-run company should have at least acknowledged the girl’s request, and the PR department of a very well-run company would have answered it. Apparently Apple, like so many other corporations these days, pays so much to its top executives that it can’t afford enough workers to respond appropriately to its customers. Yuck.

That’s a perfect quote. Apple’s goals are the most extreme vendor lock in we’ve seen in the history of personal computing and to gain more customers who never complain about how bad the koolaid tastes.

Some thins don’t add up.http://www.newyork.com/pages/chelsea_kate_isaacs/ says that she is 22
Also says “said to be 1998’s most desirable hand model in the United States and Canada, according to Reuters.”
So when she was 10 she was the most desirable hand model?
OR she was not 10 at that time and so is not 22 now?
But 22 would be more like it for a college student.

“Long Island University senior Chelsea Kate Isaacs, a 22-year old former hand model, reportedly emailed Jobs saying that her journalism professor had assigned her a story.”

Jobs should just have ignored her, too, taking the appropriate cue from his media relations department, which rightly pegged her as not crucial to Apple’s success. Bickering with her only turned a non-situation into one.

Steve jobs is an ass………. If it was me and this kind of response was sent back to me (even not expecting one…) i would have marched myself down the university’s office that was considering this project and make one hell of a stink – one that would have gotten some press (good or bad) in both the university newspapers and maybe even local……

As an educator, I side with Jobs here. The student needs to find a different way of fulfilling the terms of the assignment and not expect that her need for a grade is the same thing as a consumer issue.

yes yes yes, she sounds like the students who e-mail at the end of term and say ‘well I came in late or didn’t come to class, but I need X grade in this class, so give it to me’. No one needs to do you favors for your grades, you just need to do the work.

As an Apple shareholder, I give Steve Jobs carte blanche to be himself. He is, after all, responsible for Apple’s exceptional success. Anyone who wants to be offended by his email comments is just looking for an excuse to be a hater. The end.

Paraphrased
Student : I’ve called your PR department countless times, and left half-a-dozen voicemails. Why is nobody in your company doing their job and helping me getting a better grade?

Steveo : Our goals do not include helping you get a good grade. Sorry

Girl : This isn’t about my grades. I’m a customer… so why aren’t you helping me get better grades

Steveo : Nope. We have over 300 million users and we can’t respond to their requests unless they involve a problem of some kind. Sorry.

Girl : I am a customer… but my grades… Whaaaaaaaaaaaaargbgbblbblblbl

Steveo : Leave us alone

Personally, I think this is awesome… I’m a huge fan of keeping it real. Steve’s comment is honest. He responded like a human being, not some corporate, PC-brainwashed, muted automaton. She is acting like an entitled, whiney bitch that (based on her own-emails) is continuously harassing his PR department and then complaining to him that she isn’t getting any love back… he told her to stop wasting his time, and stop wasting his PR department’s resources.

My favorite part is the zoolander moment where she doesn’t seem to get the jist of his reply, and just rephrases her previous message…

Any other CEO of a multi-billion dollar company would either ignore you outright or have an automated response system send you a “we have received your comment and it is very important to us…” form e-mail. THIS is much better.

The girl is being a jerk. She’s trying to impose her ridiculous idea that a company has to answer her questions when they specifically do not and have no will to do so.

Steve laid out the reason for this as being that she didn’t have a problem (with one of their products) and she misinterpreted it as the problem being with her own grade. Annoying. I agree, leave Apple alone.

Clearly this girl has never had to do any actual research before, and believes that she is entitled to a press-release for her useless degree (Sorry sweet cheeks, your degree isn’t worth anything in 2010.)

Show me a professor who will say “Yep, you got an F because Apple didn’t respond to you…had they responded, your report would have been top-notch, A-quality!”

In my research, I’ve found that only about 1/6 companies PR departments will get back to you within a month. Most companies will respond within 3-6 months. Some don’t respond to all. (My experience comes from contacting aerospace parts/materials suppliers)

It takes brass balls emailing SJ from a device that is other than an Apple product. It’s no wonder he was so blunt with her. But she did accomplish reiterating that for a CEO, SJ should stick to the lab and leave the PR to the pros. Remember the antenna quip he made: “don’t hold it that way…”, what a douche… It was his pompous, holier than thou tone that tipped me towards the Droid X and away from the Apple cult.

I like all the people finding fault with the girl here…she may come across as being an ‘entitled brat’, but she was initially pointing out the fact that the PR dept. WASN’T DOING THEIR JOB. They had a request from the public that they ignored. All the fluff about her grade aside, shouldn’t they do that, if it’s their job?

Wouldn’t that be akin to going in for tech support and having the two behind the counter arguing star wars all day and never acknowledging her? (I concede that one is a true ‘customer’ bringing money in…but a PR department NEVER directly brings money in. Their job is to deal with the public and their general questions, in the same way tech support deals with the public and their tech problems.)

It’s not like they said “Sorry, we won’t answer you”. That would have been ok. Instead, they ignored her. She was annoyed at being ignored, which I think is valid.

We don’t know what her questions were, so we don’t know if she “wanted an interview” or if she was rather asking very basic questions and wanted to be able to reference Apple itself rather than a publication that was referencing Apple (she may have even just been asking for repeats of previous quotes that are the party line, but ones she can point to as “there’s no way this is skewed, this is wordforword what I was sent). If she was trying to get an interview, then yeah, she’s out of line. But if she was saying “I read that you guys feel that ‘macs kick the teeth out of pcs in every way including sexiness’, is that a true quote?”, then that’s just basic research, performed in a good manner. They ignored her, so she sent off an annoyed text, not expecting a response, to the big kahuna complaining that a division wasn’t doing its job. She also added the bit about the grade.

Then she got a reply, and it was rude. Her response wasn’t fantastic, but pointed out that she, as a customer, wanted information. The grade part was so much fluffery. I wager she thought it might get a better response if she played it up, much like when people who just don’t like a food try to claim they’re allergic to it. Obviously didn’t work in this case.

She certainly has no legal right to demand any of this info from a company. But Apple is clearly in the wrong here, from a politeness standpoint. When you have a division that is specifically set up to deal with the public proceed to ignore the public, and then you actually get mad at the public that dares point that out, you’re being rude. Especially when that member of the public is in one of the demographics that makes up your biggest customer set.

Steve Jobs is a dick, and I refuse to buy Apple products on principle. For just this type of behavior/mindset.

Finally, a reply that actually addresses the issue instead of blaming the student, bashing/excusing Jobs’ behavior, or giving Apple’s Media Relations a pass for, y’know, not bothering to do their job. Thank fuck, I was losing hope that someone rational would actually come along and comment on this.

You said it best. MEDIA relations… If she was CNN then she wouldn’t have had to leave 6 messages. Hell, if she were actually a customer calling about a particular product she owned, she likely would have gotten a prompt response too (based on prior Apple PR stories). Instead, from the e-mail exchange it is clear that she is an entitled brat who hounded the PR department for comments about rumors of a small potential future ipad rollout for a journalism class assignment screaming about deadlines and grades. Then she e-mailed the CEO to demand some satisfaction… he had the cajones to tell her the truth instead of some sugar-coated PC nonsense form letter about how “valuable her opinion is or how important her comments are to the company”

She would be at the bottom of my to-do pile as well. You know why? Because if I worked for the PR department, I would be busy doing my JOB buttering up an actual MEDIA outlet, not bending to the whim of every journalism student doing class project that calls contstantly and leaves me half-a-dozen voicemails. It takes time to listen to that garbage to make sure it isn’t actually something important!

…
which brings us to POINT #2 –>

SECTION 2) JOB
Let’s not live in fairytale world here. The JOB of every Apple employee (a publicly traded company) is to “make bucket loads of money for their shareholders.” PERIOD FULL STOP. Read that again a few times because very few people in these comments seem to understand that fundamental fact of our universe. It is NOT their job to stroke your ego, or make you feel important, or help with your class project. Most of the time, those things coincidentally align with making money, but not always!

If you had infinite resources you could answer every inquiry and kiss every baby. But in the real world you can’t make everyone happy. There are a finite number of hours in the day, and a finite amount of money any company can sink into any particular endeavor (including PR). Given the brand loyalty and brand awareness that Apple commands (and their astronomical stock gains in the past decade), I’d say that empirically their PR department is doing a stellar job.

I’m not a fan of Apple. I think my PC and Droid are vastly superior. But I am actually a HUGE fan of how Steve handled himself today. Instead of cracking heads at an undoubtedly hard-working PR department, he prioritized his companies finite resources, kept it real, gave an honest reply, and put a nagger in her place.

P.S. How many CEO’s would have even read her e-mail, much less personally respond to it with how they honestly felt?

You make two assumptions here: 1, that she “hounded them” for quotes. Although some people pointed out websites with press releases, we might just as well assume that she just wanted their press releases from them, again so that she can be sure they are accurate and unchanged. A completely reasonable request. 2, that the Apple PR department is all ‘hard working’. Its impossible that her reasonable request was ignored by lazy staffers who found it easier to ignore her than to do anything, since she is after all not a big name anything?

We cannot assume your assumptions, or mine. I will assume, however, that Jobs didn’t do research into it, I believe his reply was too quick for that. So therefore…he’s an ass. Who responded to someone finding fault by doing what I expect him to do…”can’t be my/my company’s fault, F YOU!” If his response had been “I looked into it and you’ve been hounding them for interviews they don’t want or need to provide, so F you”, THEN I would agree that it’s a cool response.

Oh, and btw:
The JOB of every Apple employee (a publicly traded company) is to “make bucket loads of money for their shareholders.”
No. Not at all true. The JOB of a safety officer is to ensure safety, NOT to make money. The JOB of the accountants may be to save as much money on taxes as possible, but at the same time it’s to make sure they comply with the law. The JOB of the PR department is to relate with the public, NOT to directly make money…PR is a very strange beast in terms of money-making, and you can’t tell what names are or are not big enough to warrant a response, really. After all, helping an 8 y/o with his school project might get you in the local papers, then picked up on Good Morning America for it, which would be wonderful PR, and much better than any press release. So you can’t say “Well, they ignored her ’cause she’s a nobody”. If they ignored her for being rude, fine. That would make sense, in fact. But don’t assume that the mighty machine of Jobs can never be wrong.

Jobs always has been an Asshole and will always be one. I can honestly say I own zero Apple products and will not own an Apple product. A generic mp3 player has worked great for me. I would still like to know how most people die waiting for a transplant but a certain CEO got one pretty quick? Say what you want about Gates but at least hes giving it away and trying to make a difference.

I gotta side with Steve on this one. She was asking for information for a school assignment, that may possibly be published in a school paper — I can’t fault Apple PR for not putting her at the top of the priority list. Also, I’m sure she could have found the information she was looking for on their website. The email she sent was super-long and basically said, “wah, I need you guys to talk to me so I can get a good grade, but you haven’t! Wah!” Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple. If he says it’s not a priority, it’s not a priority. He may have been terse, but someone needed to put this girl in her place.

If you didn’t think she was self entitled and arrogant before wait until you read her egotistical self written biography….

Favorite line: “At the age of 8, she was discovered by a well-known director amusing a crowd of pedestrians close to her residence in New York City. Since then, she has appeared on various Nickelodeon commercials, shows, and independent films. In 1998, Isaacs was the most desirable hand model in the United States and Canada.”

This too ” She has won 18 poetry contests throughout the world, and has been referred to as a “Renaissance Woman.

I hope this is a hoax, but to be honest Steve Jobs if rich enough to be as big of a dick as he wants. People will still get on their knees every day in front of him no matter what he says. In other news, the formerly evil Bill Gates is trying to end world hunger and refuses to make his kids billionaires by mere inheritance. Oh and Linux and Android still rock! I love me some Ubuntu.

By this point, to expect Steve Jobs to send you a nice e-mail is misguided.

I don’t think any CEO would have responded kindly to this student’s entitled, unprofessional e-mails anyway. That doesn’t absolved Jobs at all, but this girl really needs to wake up and act like an adult.

I see the problem…every one of here emails ends in…> Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile. Honestly, I don’t blame Steve one bit….as a good journalist should…if a source doesn’t pan out…you find another one. He is right, maybe he could have been a bit nicer in saying it, but it’s to the point…it’s not his job to get her a good grade…and just because you own an Apple product…doesn’t give you any more rights…

I think that’s the REAL reason that he wouldn’t help her. Now I can understand that Apples PR dept. is busy, but how hard would it have been for him to forward her e-mail to them . But then again, he has no real responsibility to help her. She could have easily could have made a post on their web site and might have gotten more help. Just because you neeeed help from them doesn’t automatically mean you will get it. If she is a journalism student, she should get used to getting her hands dirty digging for info!

I could careless who it is, who did it or why they did it…whether it be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, the Pope, Ronald McDonald…I would still take out my little violin and play the woe is me song and maybe even bust out with…nobody loves me.. everybody hates me..guess I’ll go eat worms.

I still think they all have better things to do than to waste time hearing this college student whine how no one is answering them at Apple…be responsible OP and look for another source…I’m sure Gray Powell would have been more than happy to meet her out for a beer or two…

“Her journalism professor had assigned her a story on a new initiative at her college to buy iPads for all incoming students. She wanted to get a quote from Apple about the use of iPads in academic settings.”

Key word here is “wanted”. There is a metric shitton of press releases, slideshare presentations, and other information online about the use of iPads in education.